Some vocations are known for chronically pushing people beyond overwork: entrepreneurs, doctors, attorneys, and air traffic controllers come to mind, among many more. But hyper-super-overwork is now much more widespread, as companies increase workloads to compensate for dramatic staff reductions.
Overload is dangerous. To address it, you must first recognize it, and then act to control it. Here are some indicators that you might be severely overworked.
- Health effects
- Sleeplessness can result from chronic overwork. You need time to wind down before sleep. Inadequate exercise, increased use of stimulants (coffee or tea), and more frequent take-out meals can lead to sudden weight gain. Canceling or repeatedly delaying medical and dental care is risky and expensive.
- Relationships
- Neglecting or denying your own need for support and emotional connection is serious, but neglecting or denying the needs of others can permanently damage relationships with your spouse, children, relatives, friends, and colleagues.
- Infrastructure
- Neglecting home or vehicle care can create financial and safety risks. Neglecting hygiene and wardrobe can seem safe enough at first, but they can be demoralizing.
And here are some tips for the hyper-super-overworked.
- Recognize your own coping
- If your best friends at work have left or have been laid off, you might feel loss and loneliness. Are you coping by taking on work? Deal with difficult emotions directly. Find someone to talk to: spouse, friend, cleric, counselor, or psychotherapist.
- Get help and understanding at home
- There are two popular strategies. You can focus on work, dealing with problems at home only when they become really severe, or you can ask for help and understanding at home as soon as possible, and find ways to be together lovingly and with respect. The former is tempting because it's easier at first, but the latter is definitely the way to go.
- Beware creeping perfectionism
- Perhaps the definition of "doing things right" needs review in light of current conditions. Is it really necessary to do all you're doing? More on perfectionism.
- Deny requests for help at work
- Some of your If your best friends at work
have left or have been
laid off, you might feel
loss and lonelinessco-workers cope with overwork by asking for favors or help. Refusing management requests can be risky, especially if you need the job, but help requests from peers or subordinates are different. Delay responding. When you do respond, make a counter offer — selective assistance or looser deadlines. - Learn and automate
- If you work with computers, almost certainly you aren't using some of their most powerful features. Be selective. Learn to use capabilities that save time by automating tasks you now do yourself.
Whether the source of your overwork is management, teammates, peers, or subordinates, you probably aren't alone. Try talking about overwork directly, if you can. Explain how you feel and ask for consideration. Work together to find clever ways to reduce everyone's load. Top Next Issue
Is every other day a tense, anxious, angry misery as you watch people around you, who couldn't even think their way through a game of Jacks, win at workplace politics and steal the credit and glory for just about everyone's best work including yours? Read 303 Secrets of Workplace Politics, filled with tips and techniques for succeeding in workplace politics. More info
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
- Names and Faces
- Most of us feel recognized, respected, and acknowledged when others use our names. And many of us have
difficulty remembering the names of others, especially those we don't know well. How can we get better
at connecting names and faces?
- Selling Uphill: The Pitch
- Whether you're a CEO or a project champion, you occasionally have to persuade decision makers who have
some kind of power over you. What do they look for? What are the key elements of an effective pitch?
What does it take to Persuade Power?
- Paths
- Most of us follow paths through our careers, or through life. We get nervous when we're off the path.
We feel better when we're doing what everyone else is doing. But is that sensible?
- Four Popular Ways to Mismanage Layoffs: I
- When layoffs are necessary, the problems they are meant to address are sometimes exacerbated by mismanagement
of the layoff itself. Here is Part I of a discussion of four common patterns of mismanagement, and some
suggestions for those managers and other employees who recognize the patterns in their own companies.
- Coping with Layoff Survival
- Your company has just done another round of layoffs, and you survived yet again. This time was the most
difficult, because your best pal was laid off, and you're even more fearful for your own job security.
How can you cope with survival?
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Emotions at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
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- After we recognize the need to contact a colleague or colleagues to work out a way to move forward, we next must decide how to make contact. Phone? Videoconference? Text message? There are some simple criteria that can help with such decisions. Available here and by RSS on May 15.
- And on May 22: Rescheduling Collaborative Work
- Rescheduling is what we do when the schedule we have now is so desperately unachievable that we must let go of it because when we look at it we can no longer decide whether to laugh or cry. The fear is that the new schedule might come to the same end. Available here and by RSS on May 22.
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